Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(27) Why

“Wrong answer,” I said, and I slammed my fist into his nose, blood spilling down his face, staining my knuckles. The man winced and struggled against the ropes that bound him to the chair, growling when they didn’t give way. I hovered above him, watching without a thought in my mind as the man bled, confined and imprisoned, his eyes dark and dangerous and full of vengeance. I wanted to smile at him, because no one was as vengeful as I was.

“Tyler,” I purred. “You are only making this harder for yourself.”

“You’re a sick bitch,” he snapped at me through the onslaught of blood down his face. He spat out a mouthful, aiming at me, but it fell short. “I don’t know anything about your mommy, little girl, so maybe you should just let it go.”

“I thought we were going to be honest with each other from now on,” I cautioned him, frowning at him like I was sad. “Lying is not going to do you any good, and I have no intention of ending your life.”

“You’ll have to,” he told me matter-of-factly. “I’ll go straight to them, and you won’t be able to outrun them.”

But I had already thought of this, of course. I didn’t act on a whim or without being prepared enough to know I could counter all of the things he would throw at me with grace and nothing but the truth, truth that would disable him and he knew he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, taking a slow step forward, trying to make myself smaller as the man before me grew in size, his chest puffing up, challenging me in a way he knew that the amount of his confidence might be the decision factor in him winning. But he and I both knew the same thing, and all he was going on right now was the hope that I wasn’t one step ahead.

“You can tell them everything,” I told him soberly, “but they’re going to start asking you a lot of hard questions, Tyler, and they aren’t going to be nearly as nice as I am.”

It was the truth—I was being much nicer than usual, with only minor injuries and not a lot of blood, and he and I both knew the damage that Helford or the company upstairs could infliction on people, to the point that some of the bodies hadn’t been found, that people had simply ceased to exist. He knew something that could easily get him wiped off the map, because it was so against everything that the people who trained us preached.

This man knew something, something big by the looks of it, and Marci wouldn’t have risked everything to give me the file if she hadn’t been sure.

I moved closer to him until I was in his personal space, until my cheek was brushing against his and my lips were against his ear. I felt his jaw clench at my proximity and I smiled, knowing that I was unnerving him. I sighed against his ear, and all that did was make him tense up further, made his fists curl tightly around the arms of the chair he was chained to. His weakness amused me, and I think he heard it in my voice when I said, “I just want to know who is in charge of your little rebellion, Tyler.”

“And I still don’t know what you are talking about, little girl,” he sneered, his eyes on fire as I pulled away to see the answer in his eyes, the guarded expression that so clearly read that he was hiding something. My fingers twitched to attack him one more time, to prove to him that I wasn’t this stupid little girl that he saw me as, but I urged myself to be cool and controlled. There was nothing more terrifying than a methodical murderer who was in control of their actions to their fullest ability. There wasn’t a person more terrifying than me when I had my target in my sights.

My eyes zeroed in on Tyler, and I wondered if he knew how dangerous pushing my buttons had the potential of being.

“Who do you think I am?” I asked him slowly, putting a bored drawl on the words. He smirked and did not answer. “Tyler,” I growled warningly. “I asked you who you think I am.”